Designing/engineering a watch movement is among the most difficult of watchmaking ventures. For a production level surpassing manufacturing movements, it takes anywhere from 7 to 10 years to go from concept to production models. Once you get there, however, you can significantly decrease that timeline for future projects.

In 2009, we decided to put everything on hold and begin the process of developing our own movement, the K1 automatic. Stephen Kussmaul, former Eterna engineer, took on the challenge and following three years of development, he passed the torch to Jonas Nydegger and Florian Serex to carry it to the finish line. In 2015, the first HORAGE watch designed and engineered at our home in Biel/Bienne was launched on Kickstarter with the name Jonas-K1. The watch soon evolved into the Array, featuring centre seconds, a power reserve indicator and big date.

The Jonas was actually our second watch, following Omnium which debuted in 2009 at Basel World. At that time Omnium featured an outsourced movement.  This outsourced movement was the catalyst for us to dig our heels in and take on the seemingly insane idea of developing our very own base calibre from the ground up. 7 years later Omnium would be retrofitted with our K1 movement. Additional models would make use of K1, those being Autark and Solar Wind, and Multiply became our first configurable watch as we leveraged the modularity of the K1, thus making Multiply our second successful Kickstarter launch.

These projects provided invaluable knowledge and R&D to develop new movements like the K-TOU tourbillon and K2 micro-rotor, and the mature K1 is now on its 10th version. The investment we started in 2009 in designing and engineering the K1 has created a solid foundation for HORAGE to build upwards. And as we look forward our sights are firmly set on performance watchmaking.

Beyond Swiss Made

Switzerland is no doubt the epicentre of watchmaking technology, movement development, supplier relations and the education of new watchmakers. That certainly doesn’t mean that other parts of Europe and the world don’t have amazing watchmakers and engineers, and we too have partners outside of Switzerland that excel at hand, dial and case development. We only choose the best artisans and technological proficient partners, wherever they may be. The movement is always engineered by us, however, and that accounts for the majority of a watch’s value. For one to be officially Swiss Made, 60% of production value must be Swiss, while the movement must also be assembled, tested and regulated in Switzerland.

That minimal threshold allows many brands headquartered outside of Switzerland to have “Swiss Made” watches. Our watches far exceed this standard, ranging from 87% to 98% Swiss, and we again operate in the heart of Swiss watchmaking. Our movements are almost entirely Swiss Made, making them reach the 98% Swiss Made valuation.

Producing a mechanical Swiss watch remains a very human experience as no machine today can simply stamp out a luxury timepiece. We have placed “Hand Made” on the dial of some of our watches instead of “Swiss Made,” which is engraved on the movement itself.  The newer generation timepieces are marked with our hometown of Biel Bienne as over 50% of our movements parts are sourced in town with upwards of an additional 48% coming from partners within a 45 kilometre radius of our production facility.